An insult is an expression or statement (or sometimes behavior) which is disrespectful or scornful. Insults may be intentional or accidental.[1] An insult may be factual, but at the same time pejorative, such as the word "inbred".[2]

Erving Goffman points out that every "crack or remark set up the possibility of a counter-riposte, topper, or squelch, that is, a comeback".[4] He cites the example of possible interchanges at a dance in a school gym:

A one-liner: Boy: "Care to dance?" Girl: "No, I came here to play basketball" Boy: "Crumbles"

A comeback: Boy: "Care to dance?" Girl: "No, I came here to play basketball" Boy: "Sorry, I should have guessed by the way you're dressed".[5]

Backhanding is referred to as slapping someone using the back of the hand instead of the palm—that is generally a symbolic, less forceful blow.[citation needed] Correspondingly, a backhanded (or left-handed) compliment, or asteism, is an insult that is disguised as, or accompanied by, a compliment, especially in situations where the belittling or condescension is intentional.[6]

Examples of backhanded compliments include, but not limited to:

"I did not expect you to ace that exam. Good for you.", which could impugn the target's success as a fluke.[7]

The flyting was a formalized sequence of literary insults: invective or flyting, the literary equivalent of the spell-binding curse, uses similar incantatory devices for opposite reasons, as in Dunbar's Flyting with Kennedy.[10]

"A little-known survival of the ancient 'flytings', or contests-in-insults of the Anglo-Scottish bards, is the type of xenophobic humor once known as 'water wit' in which passengers in small boats crossing the Thames ... would insult each other grossly, in all the untouchable safety of being able to get away fast."[11]

Samuel Johnson once triumphed in such an exchange: "a fellow having attacked him with some coarse raillery, Johnson answered him thus, 'Sir, your wife, under pretence of keeping a bawdy-house, is a receiver of stolen goods.'"[12]

The use of the V sign as an insult, combined with the upwards swing movement

Various typologies of insults have been proposed over the years. EthologistDesmond Morris, noting that "almost any action can operate as an Insult Signal if it is performed out of its appropriate context – at the wrong time or in the wrong place", classes such signals in ten 'basic categories":[13]

Disinterest signals

Boredom signals

Impatience signals

Superiority signals

Deformed-compliment signals

Mock-discomfort signals

Rejection signals

Mockery signals

Symbolic insults

Dirt signals

Elizabethans took great interest in such analyses, distinguishing out, for example, the "fleering frump ... when we give a mock with a scornful countenance as in some smiling sort looking aside or by drawing the lip awry, or shrinking up the nose".[14] Shakespeare humerously set up an insult-hierarchy of seven-fold "degrees. The first, the Retort Courteous; the second, the Quip Modest; the third, the Reply Churlish; the fourth, the Reproof Valiant; the fifth, the Countercheck Quarrelsome; the sixth, the Lie with Circumstance; the seventh, the Lie Direct".[15]

What qualifies as an insult is also determined both by the individual social situation and by changing social mores. Thus on one hand the insulting "obscene invitations of a man to a strange girl can be the spicy endearments of a husband to his wife".[16]